[RFC] Metadata access and storage

[Anders Feder]

Hi,

I would like to propose a new standards activity: metadata access and 
storage.

The mission is as follows: "Define a single, unified interface for 
access to all metadata on the desktop. Then extend it to support 
insertion (storage) of metadata too."

There has been at least one previous effort of this kind that I know of 
(Xesam), but most parts of it seems to have been either consumed by 
other projects (NEPOMUK), or abandoned completely (notably the query 
language). In any case, the state of affairs appears to be that there is 
no standard interface for accessing metadata: Evolution, Nautilus, etc. 
all still exist as separate silos - not as a unified whole which can be 
queried through a single interface. - It's 2011, and I /still/ have to 
manually copy contact information from Empathy to Thunderbird.

Benjamin Otte gave a pretty good review of the situation (as far as 
GNOME goes) here: http://blogs.gnome.org/otte/2009/07/23/semantic-desktop/

As always, all options are open, but my own tentative proposal -- titled 
Semantk -- will give you an idea of what I have in mind: 
http://www.semantk.org/

How would /you/ solve this problem?

-- 
-Anders Feder


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